


A Shaky Perch

by lonelywalker



Category: NYPD Blue
Genre: Gay Bar, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An epilogue to "Moving Day". Bale's done his job. Living with himself is going to be a much harder task.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shaky Perch

_It’s a shaky perch you’re on… You have to answer to the people above you, look after the people below you, and you have to be able to live with yourself…  
\- Lt. Thomas Bale, “Moving Day”_

Bale’s drink is a straight up Jack Daniel’s - hard enough, even without doctor’s orders forbidding him from alcohol. He had intended to gulp down shots in the sort of abandon he is used to coveting, watching from afar as other men let loose their desires, but even that chance of escape has failed him. He has taken his usual sips all night, never more than coating his mouth with a thin layer of alcohol before it dissolves. He’s been savoring it like the taste of death, but even his well-honed sense of fatalism won’t let him get drunk.

There isn’t much pain anymore, although he’s neglected the medication they thrust upon him at the hospital. They had seemed to expect that he would want to be numb for the next six months. That expectation had scared him a little, but now all his aches are from stiff limbs and bruised joints. He had taken many a tumble before resigning himself – at least for now – to the cane. More than anything, though, he feels heavy. It makes no sense. If anything, there’s less of him than there was before. The pitted scar at his side tells him that. The bullet wound took his spleen, emptied his blood, tore nerves, damaged kidneys, and robbed him of his only purpose in life. He’s been to the 15th precinct today, and he knows he’s not going back.

Once you’re gone, you’re gone, he’s been told. He never felt it until now. No one, and certainly not the NYPD, can give a thought to the past when each day brings new victims, criminals, and crises. His very professionalism had prevented him from warring against his inevitable consignment to history. He had done his job, tied up loose ends, and filed the paperwork. Perhaps if he had died, bled out in that dingy apartment corridor, he would have more of a permanent place in their memories. Yes, of course they remember heroes, and he has a police purple heart already gathering dust in his apartment, but the true heroes never collect their medals. Heroes win a glorious victory and a glorious death. They don’t linger, wounded and tired, sipping whisky in a backstreet bar.

Everything he has ever worked to protect will go on without him. The 15th is in good hands, and the individual detectives who made up his first and only command are solid people. They have their jobs, and they have lives: Sipowicz’s family; Jones’ adopted son; Clark’s girlfriend… None of them will be sucked under and used up by the trials of the job. He had been wrong about them, once. He knows all too well of their integrity now. Only hours ago, leaving the precinct for the last time, Bale had told Sipowicz that, as the new squad commander, living with himself would be no problem. It hadn’t been for Bale, either. He had done what was right. Now that the job has been taken away, however, it seems as though nothing is left.

“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” says a voice next to him, and the badly maintained wooden bar shakes just a fraction as someone leans against it. Bale glances up and to the right, encountering a smile, a shrug, and a vaguely apologetic expression. “I don’t drink much,” the young man says. “You look like you know what’s good.”

He’s maybe twenty-five – crewcut hair with a line just above his ear that suggests the normal presence of a too-tight cap. Fresh-faced, blond, and far, far too innocent for a place like this. Bale inwardly sighs, and wonders why Vice are scraping the barrel for undercover operatives. Something in him wants to just ignore the newcomer. Something else suggests that if he doesn’t take the bait, he’ll be wallowing in his own self pity for hours to come.

“In that case you’re probably better off with a soda. No one here’s going to carry you home when you pass out.” Bale takes another sip of his whisky. “This isn’t your frat house, kid. They’ll take your wallet and your badge before doing you any favors.”

It takes a moment for the kid to process his words, too caught up in handing over money to pay for his drink. And then he gets a rather shocked expression. “I’m not…” The kid frowns, wide-eyed, attempting to give the impression that Bale has made a genuine mistake. “What?”

Bale simply gives him a weary look and turns back to his drink, hoping that the kid will get the message and just leave him alone. Instead, he gets a whisper at his ear. “You… you’re a cop?”

He takes good care not to nod, not to move his head one damn inch. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.”

It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising, that the kid doesn’t have the good sense to take his advice and bolt out of the place as fast as humanly possible. Instead, there’s that glance around to check that no one is watching – guaranteed to make everyone pay them closer attention – and a whisper: “You… you’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

“For drinking in a bar? No.” He still has that sharp edge in his voice, the clarity, the tone he uses when he has to testify in court or discipline a subordinate. Somewhere, however, his mind has registered the fact that that was not a question an undercover Vice cop would ask. But it might be the type of question he would have asked once, in an all-too-similar situation.

There used to be fear when he came here, to sit on a barstool in the middle of what he would ordinarily consider enemy territory. This is a pickup ground for male prostitutes, con artists, and some of the less-than-hardcore drug dealers. Only a week or two ago, had he been found here during a vice bust, he would have felt compelled to put in his papers and resign. No ex-internal affairs cop could survive being outed, even in a safely domestic environment. Most of the time he isn’t interested in purchasing anything but alcohol, although the attentions of some of the pushier, prettier pros are occasionally welcome. It’s good just to submerge himself in the unwitting company of other men in the same position – cops, lawyers, doctors, teachers… He knows the type. All of them with their short, neat haircuts, conservative clothes, and furtive expressions. He’s one himself, or at least he used to be.

Perhaps a couple of the regulars have noticed the cane he’s left propped against the bar, within an inch of his hand should he need it in a hurry. Maybe they’ve taken note of his awkward limp, and the way his eyes still show the haunted look of a man who’s seen his own life seeping away. But still, they will have thought, it can’t have changed much. After all, he’s still here.

Bale takes a breath. “And not for the other thing, either,” he says, although it feels like a defeat. He’s so used to playing by the rules, to being hard, to ruling by fear, that letting this boy go home unafraid seems strangely unsettling. Perhaps it’s the admission of his own guilt, that he really does know where he is and why he’s there.

He hasn’t even _thought_ of going somewhere else. It wouldn’t matter now. He could wear garish colors and go dancing at a gay club – pick up some young thing and screw him all night for free. And no one would care. Even if he knew where to go – and surely one of the kids around here could tell him – there’s nothing in him that wants that kind of happiness. He’s too well used to a life of furtive joy and all too obvious dedication to the job. He could live with himself – even with that constrained, hidden part of himself – as long as he had a purpose. Now that the purpose is gone, even this new ability to truly _be_ himself seems hollow.

The kid gulps down his whisky like a seasoned pro. Maybe he’s too nervous to feel the burn. Maybe he’s too nervous even to choke. “Thank you,” he says in a whisper with such sincerity that Bale doesn’t feel worthy of his appreciation. And then he leaves.

Bale had worried for a moment that the kid wouldn’t go, that he’d be stuck all night with unwanted company, making monosyllabic conversation for fear of revealing anything _real_ about himself. But he turns slightly, and watches the kid leave, shoving past the pros at the door. Would it have been _so bad_ had he stayed? He’s reacting the way he would have weeks ago, when he still had a job – when he still _was_ the job. Now he’s… What? He’s a lonely man in a bar, and he could use the company.

It’s time for him to go, too, now that he’s beginning to slip into a melancholy even further shots won’t remedy. Driving home has become a tedious, awkward task, made dangerous by alcohol and his uncooperative limbs. This is another legacy of more cautious days, when hailing a cab in this neighborhood might attract too much of the wrong kind of attention. It’s stupid, and he has to stop.

Maybe next week, he thinks, grabbing the cane and laboriously getting to his feet. Maybe next week he will take a cab to the bar, and talk to people in a civil tone, and generally behave like a human being. Maybe then he’ll be able to live with himself.

Bale casts a last look around at all the eyes studiously avoiding his. He plants his cane on the cracked tile floor, and limps out of the bar.


End file.
